


And Long Ago

by kittydesade



Category: Once Upon a Time (2011)
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma isn't normally one for psychiatrists, but Archie Hopper makes it easy to talk to him, maybe a little too easy for her comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Long Ago

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sophia_Prester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Prester/gifts).



> Spoilers for the most recent (1x07 at the time of this note) episode of Once Upon A Time.

The problem with Dr. Hopper was that he didn't look like a shrink. Emma didn't plan on telling him, but he kind of looked like that dorky kid who sat two desks behind her in fifth and sixth grade and kept staring either at the girls or out the window, both with the same longing expression. Dr. Hopper was a little beyond longing after girls who thought they were too cool for him, but he still had that same earnest look in his eyes, and that smile. It was a little unnerving.

On the other hand, she couldn't deny that talking to him was a pretty good solution to a lot of the little problems that came up, even if it was just over coffee or cocoa.

This wasn't one of the little problems, although he'd been surprisingly attentive and gentle and it was his idea to have this session at Granny's anyway. He'd offered that it would make her feel a little better about talking about Graham's death. At least, it would work better than bringing her into his office and making her feel like a patient; Emma didn't do well with being someone's patient. She wasn't the sort of person who took help easily. Or at all, when she could afford it.

"I feel like I should be on a couch or something," she wrinkled her nose and then hoped he realized she was teasing.

He laughed, anyway. "Well, it is a pretty comfortable couch, or so I hear."

"Don't tell me you've slept on that couch before..." She pointed the tip of her pen at him, even though she knew the answer was probably yes. Not that she could talk, she'd pulled all nighters driving, then curled up in her car when she couldn't go any longer and slept in the backseat. "Couches aren't good for your back."

"I think I did all right," he smiled. "Anyway, that was along time ago. It was a rough time."

"What happened?" she asked. Automatically, and then she shook her head. "No, never mind, I'm sorry. That sounds like it was a personal thing."

He shook his head, too, talking over her last sentence or so. "No, it's all right, it wasn't anything, just. You know, paperwork. A couple of late nights, it was easier just not to go home."

He was lying to her. Emma took a big long sip of her cocoa to cover the fact that she noticed, that she was surprised. She couldn't think of why he'd lie about something like that either, and then she could. And then she couldn't think of why he'd lie rather than take the out he gave her, and then she knew she was obsessing over one tiny detail instead of moving on in the conversation.

"I know the feeling," she said, even though she didn't.

Dr. Hopper eased into that space between when she took a breath to say something else and as she paused to think of something else to say. "Is it easier not to go by the police station?" he asked, waiting until she'd lowered her mug again.

Emma curled her toes in her shoes and her feet up under her chair. "It's my job. I kind of have to do the sheriff's job from the police station." That wasn't what he asked. She knew it, and he knew it, and there was only so long he'd let her get away with dodging his questions. "I don't know. I don't..."

Dr. Hopper waited, hands around his coffee on the table, barely moving. If it were her she would have been keeping still so as not to draw the other person's focus away from what they were working on saying. She wondered if he used the same tactics. She wondered if tactics was even the right word. And she stalled a little more.

"It's not as though there's a bloodstain still on the floor or anything."

"No," he agreed. "Would it make it easier if there was a bloodstain? Something tangible to remind you that a tragic, awful thing happened here?"

"What? No!" That wasn't what she'd meant. Okay, maybe it was. "No, I just. I mean, there's nothing..." What did she mean? Her fingers tapped each other over the rim of the cocoa mug while she tried to put it in words and got more and more frustrated when she couldn't.

Emma slumped back in her chair hard enough to ruck her jacket up on the back of it. "It doesn't seem right, you know? That there isn't anything in the office that really says he was there. We moved his stuff out of his desk, he didn't even have all that much stuff," she added, sitting up again and tugging down her jacket. "What kind of a guy holds a job for... how long was he sheriff, anyway?"

Dr. Hopper started to answer, then had to think about that. Then he gave Emma a measuring look she wasn't sure she liked, though it didn't clash too much with his wistful child attitude. "Several years, I think. There isn't anything in his office that says he was there or there isn't anything ... in your life, that says he was a part of it. Even if it was only for a little while."

She laughed, she had to laugh because if she didn't she'd yell at him. "He wasn't a part of my life. I mean, yeah, he was, the way he offered me a job and everything, but he wasn't a big part of my life."

"But he was a part of your life."

Emma stared down at her empty mug, then back up at him. "Why are you pushing this? It's not like I knew him well, he was my boss for a while, he arrested me, he was pretty dopey for a law officer..." And he had been kind to her. And he'd been really upset the last day or so that he'd been alive, talking, babbling. About things, Henry type things, the fever, the wolf in the woods. Evil Queens. She hadn't thought of him as the type who would buy into that and then all of a sudden he was talking about the curse. And treating her as though it might be real.

And then he'd died, mysteriously, of a heart attack that even the doctors said he shouldn't have suffered. They were looking for undetected heart defects, last she'd heard. "He was sweet. He could be really... sweet."

"Emma..." Hopper leaned forward a little. "And, maybe I'm wrong about this, but sometimes letting go of people is hard, and sometimes it's even harder when we've known them such a short time to begin with, because we haven't yet begun to define their place in our lives."

"We were... defined." It sounded weak, even to her. He was her boss, but then he'd kissed her and he said he remembered something from the fairy tale world. That didn't exist. Plus he'd been sleeping with Regina, but then he ditched Regina which had seemed to surprise the other woman and kissed her. Emma had been kissed by a lot of guys before, but none with that kind of shyness, not since her very early teens. "We were..."

Hopper waited, somehow giving the impression without moving an inch that he wanted her to continue.

"Friends." Emma lifted her chin and settled on that. "We were friends."

And as if that were a magic word, she did feel something prickling the backs of her eyes, making them feel hot and sticky. Giving shape or definition to the relationship, giving Graham the dubious title of friend, coupled with the fact that she didn't call people 'friend' very often but Hopper hadn't left her much of an out, there. He'd started the talk about definition. Graham had been a friend. And now he wasn't anything anymore.

Emma stood, meaning to bus her own coffee cup into Ruby's dish bin but the room blurred for a second and it was hard to swallow. Something tight in the back of her throat, and sticky. She sat back down only she missed the seat part and landed on the corner, which sent her skidding a little on the floor till she got her balance. People stared. She straightened and tried to recover her dignity.

Hopper's hand on her shoulder reminded her of Graham. The way he'd grabbed her to keep her from clocking Regina, the supposed evil Queen, for accusing her of stealing boyfriends and children. Everyone was way too nice here, impossibly nice, like a, well. Like a fairy tale. Too damn nice, Emma wasn't used to this, didn't have anything she could justify fighting against, and this lump in her throat was getting bigger and more obnoxious. "I can't breathe," she muttered, pushing at Dr. Hopper, who'd crouched down in front of her and was trying to give her a hug. "I can't, I'm not, I'm fine. I can't breathe." It didn't occur to her in mid-protest that those were two contradictory states.

He didn't say anything. He didn't say anything _substantial._ He hugged her, and she started to cry, and he murmured little nonsense things and she kept crying and she didn't know why she was crying, for Graham or for herself or for a little girl who no one wanted and everyone abandoned, or for a fairy tale world with all the magic and all the happy endings taken away, or for the ultimate betrayal of not being able to do anything about it when someone died unexpectedly and you were left with all your memories of them draining through your fingers like water. She didn't even have anything to remember him by.

No one in the diner bothered them. No one else was in the diner but Ruby and her grandmother. Over his shoulder, Emma caught half a glimpse of Ruby going to turn the sign and pull the shade a little down, so she could cry into the poor doctor's jacket undisturbed. And she did appreciate that.


End file.
